


Magic Glass

by Do_Sugar_High



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Hermione's a budding activist, Ron's being a jerk, poc characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 03:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11569545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Do_Sugar_High/pseuds/Do_Sugar_High
Summary: Hermione had hope when she entered the magic world that things would be different there. Unfortunately, it seems discrimination is a thing no matter where you go, and nothing will change unless she is willing to step in and lead the way.





	Magic Glass

**Author's Note:**

> I know JK said racism isn't a thing in the magical world, but what about for the half-bloods and muggleborns coming in? Some magical ideologies would surely spark a bad sense of deja vu.

I come to Hogwarts bright eyed with a head full of books. I know them all, of course, cover to cover and the footnotes in between. I'm thinking if I step on this train with the right foot forward, things will be different from primary school, from daycare, from those days at the park where I swung solo on a swing set because I was fine on my own. 

I practice with my wand before coming here. I can produce light with a flick and help Mum reach the pots on the top shelf. 

She smiles and bends down to hug me. “You’re a wonderful girl, Hermione. Never forget that.” She’s sad, but there is something more than that hidden in her expression. It’s probably because school starts soon, but I know I’ll be fine. 

Those books tell me everything I'll ever need to know. There’s magic, magical people, and magic animals right under our noses. If I read enough, I can prepare myself for whatever comes. But I can't ignore the little voice that reminds me what else those books say. About magical history and about my place in it. 

It doesn't matter. It shouldn't. I have magic just like they do. I won't be the odd one out anymore because of wonky teeth and my set of mis-matched parents. 

I run through the barrier with my left foot forward. I step onto the train with my left too. I descend the train with my left, approach the hat with my left, and set off for my new life in the red and gold house by swinging my left foot over the bench and then my right. Perhaps I should be more superstitious in the future. 

 

It's a surprise to see that things aren't so different at Hogwarts or in the magical world. Culture shock my first year doesn't present a problem since very little differs from my previous school: I stand at the top of each class; girls whisper behind my back – I don't know if they are talking about me, but I can't help but feel they are – and the circumstances of my birth follow me, tainting me as trash. 

The teachers say they don't buy into that old-fashion nonsense. They shower me with praise. "Brilliant! Outstanding! Truly remarkable, for a muggleborn." It's everything I could have dreamed at first. Two or three weeks down the line it gets repetitive. It begins to bug be how they layer the emphasis on that final qualifying statement. 

I am not a witch, but a muggleborn. The difference becomes apparent when peers and professors alike watch me wave my wand like a back-flipping puppy. If I complete a spell before the others, it is remarkable in light of my heritage, or lack thereof. When my hand goes up, I am indulged, not listened to. Sometimes, it feels like they are inches away from petting my hair as they compliment my work (I've that happen quite a few times before too).

Nonetheless time passes and I take what I can get. It's not so bad by second year. I have thicker skin and friends who almost understand. Harry comes close, but magic is all swishy wands and sparkles eyes. It's so very different from the muggle world! (It's not.) He listens rapturously as professors laud his father and say his mother was a prodigious muggleborn (he still thinks that means witch). His blood status leaves him invisible; not ideal, but even Slytherin tolerates half-bloods.

Ron, he has a better hope of understanding the molecular difference between lead and gold than my position in his world. After all, what greater handicaps are there than the poverty of lower-middle class and the obscurity of being a middle child?

 

I'm being uncharitable, but second year has me scared. I can't tell my parents because this was my choice.

"Are you sure you want to attend this... magic school?" They asked after Professor McGonagall turned her teacup into a toad and showed us through Diagon Alley a year and a half ago. They probably picked up on the looks that I overlooked, the ones from magicals in fancy robes and dragonhide boots. 

I said I was sure. It was magic! I laid out the pros and cons, explaining with my eleven-year-old wisdom the expanded possibilities for my future. I put all of my eggs in this basket. Now I suspect I'm walking around with a mirror in one hand and slimy, yellow yolk in the other. 

I stand on ground zero of a micro genocide, and no one seems to care. The Headmaster has the castle on high security and encourages the students (the muggleborns) to go nowhere alone, but where are the aurors? Why is this not front-page news? If it were a pureblood in the hospital wing – not a cat or a ghost, Justin or Collin – would the Prophet report it then? The magic fire of the torches grow more sinister every day. My friends tell me not to worry as if it is that easy. 

I sit in the common room with a thick tome open in my lap. It's the sixth Potions text I've scoured today. I don’t see why the petrified students have to wait so many months to be set free. Already I've found three alternate drafts to cure petrification within a week, the only complication being the price of their ingredients. I'm sure there is some kind of justification for why none of these have been employed. The Headmaster surely would have chosen one of these options if he could. I just can't find the excuse.

"Feels familiar, doesn't it?" A voice asks from behind, someone who was reading my notes over my shoulder. Dean circles around and settles himself on the single seater by the fire. This may be the first time I've seen him without Seamus attached to his hip. 

"What's familiar?" I ask.

"The estimated worth of our lives. It's kind of funny, we got the short end of two sticks. Muggle, magic, what's the difference when leaving our house still runs the risk of us not coming back?"

Dean and I don't talk much passed that, but we both understand. Less than a week later, I see yellow slit eyes in the reflection of my mirror. I don't wake up until after the mandrakes fully mature. 

 

I am ashamed at the end of third year. I am blind and a hypocrite. 

Professor Lupin is an incredible teacher. He guides us through both theory and practical work with ease and, unlike Lockhart, actual comprehension of the class material. With him we not only confront our fears but we learn to fight against them as well. At least, we should. 

I have never cheated in class, and I don't know if this counts as cheating, but boggarts do not reflect a person's deepest fear. Classified as an X class dark creature by the Ministry as of 1832 (relatively low on the danger scale), boggarts do not have the intelligence to read minds or even differentiate between the forms they take. A boggart merely senses whatever fear is closest to the forefront of a person's mind and assumes that shape. I read ahead. I know the material, and so when my turn comes in line I manufacture a fear. 

It transforms into McGonagall presenting me with a Troll on our most recent assignment. The class laughs enough at my obsession with perfect grades that I don't need to. Some Gryffindor I am, too scared to look into the eyes of what really scares me. 

Much later, Professor Lupin is absent from class again. As the substitute for the day Snape doesn't need to tell me to open up to page three hundred and ninety-four. Our real Defense instructor is a werewolf, and with Astronomy class every Wednesday at midnight I can't possibly the only student to already know it. Then again, wizards aren't exactly the most observant of people. Ron is digging through his bag in search of his text, which for some reason is currently under his butt. Professor Snape has to point it out to him. 

I don't say anything, not even to Harry and Ron about Professor Wolf-Wolf (really, what a name). I feel a weird sort of kinship between me and the Professor. We're both half-breeds. I laugh. I didn't think that joke was particularly funny when Sabrina compared me to her dual-toned cat when I was eight, but I don't feel like breaking anyone's nose this time around. 

I can't even tell that he is a werewolf on most days. Watching him, in class, at the head table, in the halls, becomes a favorite pastime of mine. It's curious seeing him act like a normal wizard. I suppose this is what people mean by 'passing.'

The school year comes to an end, and Ron finds his rat as well as a grimm. Curiosity sours quickly into suspicion and then indignance as I shout my accusation in the Shrieking Shack. "I never should have trusted you! Harry, he's a werewolf!"

"Ten points to Gryffindor. You really are the smartest witch your age," he says coolly and collectedly. 

I see my own face distorted in the dusty reflection of the window behind Lupin. It's filled with disgust, a sneer worthy of Malfoy himself. My arm is still partially raised, stabbing toward the werewolf and the escapee. They should be matching, both in black and white striped sets of prison garb. 

And then he keeps speaking, and Black speaks. They tell a story of wrongful conviction. The most trustworthy pre-determinedly guilty due to a family name. The most ignorant overlooked because of his species' alignment to the dark. They have both been hurt and lost everything at the hands of prejudice, and here I am, in torn jeans and face scratched from the Whomping Willow but still wasting my breath to rant about the inherent evil of, not the man who had taught us with enthusiasm and kindness throughout the school year, but a werewolf. I wonder if I ever actually trusted him after putting two and two together. Or was I treating him like a housebroken wolf?

I have a feeling that face I see in the old shack's window is my real boggart. I don't think I can just Ridikulus my own bigotry away.

 

I study the summer before my forth year, not for classes (I'm already caught up on all texts through fifth) but for a better understanding of the socio-political state of the magical world. I look at laws and platforms, cross-analyzing them with similar situations in non-magical communities. I look at events of significance and lore that touches upon the many magical species of Britain and their relation to wizards. 

The information my research yields disturbs me. 

"Come shopping with me sweetheart. Shut up those books," Mum says noticing my diminished appetite and growing preoccupation.

My dad tries his hand. "How 'bout a fishing trip this Sunday. I'll close up the office, and you and me can have a nice little sit in at the lake. It's been a while." It has, but I'm reluctant to spare the time. Not with the state of things. 

I am still shaken from my last year at school. The wizarding world has a way of warping logic. It's magic, Harry always shrugs when I question the sentience of the portraits. That's just the way things are, you gotta stop thinking like a muggle, is Ron's typical response. I love them both dearly, but I wish they would pay more attention to things outside of dark lord conspiracies. 

'Just the way things are' apparently has a three-tiered ranking system for magicals: Creatures at the bottom, Beings forming the middle ground, and wizards/witches reigning at the pinnacle. Perhaps I should be glad that I as a muggleborn rank above a vampire, but I am relieved disgusted. It means I haven't fallen as far into the moral quagmire as I feared. Centaurs are granted the same rank, and therefore rights, as the Whomping Willow, and goblins are subservient to wizards in this system. It is technically legal for a wizard to own anything below Being status. And the rankings appear dangerously biased toward anthropic form: meaning, regardless of sentience, that which looks more like a wizard has a greater chance of being treated like a wizard in the wizarding world. Even witches are a step down.

I can't sit back and bemoaning my own lot when there are so many others without a voice. I find my first cause to champion in a place I least expect, and my last delusions about the unquestionable goodness of Hogwarts crumble: there are elves doing the laundry, elves cleaning our rooms, and elves kitchens of Hogwarts. 

SPEW is not a success, and while I remain unsurprised by the apathy of my classmates, my temper grows short with Ronald Weasley. 

"Give it a rest, Hermione. They like the work, see. Hey you, get me a sandwich would ya." 

The elf in question nearly drops his large bowl of pudding at the sudden address. "Yes, Mister Weezies!" He shouts gleefully then returns with a platter of chips, pickles, and a neatly sliced masterpiece of sandwich work.

My fury only rises as Ron takes the proffered ham and swiss without a word of thanks. He turns to me with his mouth full. "Did that look like an unhappy elf to you?"

I throw my water in his face and leave to find less boorish company. My mum for a time worked as a waitress in South Africa. She struggled through double, sometimes triple, shifts to raise money for school. Being a dentist may grant her a comfortable life, but becoming one left her with less than nothing. She could tolerate the hours – she told me one afternoon as we baked cookies together on her rare day off – and the messes she always had to clean were easily taken care of, but what made her days hell were the people. They didn't see a person carrying their food but a creature whose sole purpose was to serve. They looked down on her not because of who she was but rather what: waitress, female, dark, inferior. 

Locking the elves in a box of happy servitude would be no different than stealing Mum's – now Dr. Granger's –future as more than a food server. How long have the house elves been told their job is to serve wizards and that a good elf is a working elf? Judging by Ron's nonchalance, long enough for everyone, including themselves, to believe it. 

I don’t want my Society for the Protection of Elvish Welfare to free house elves. That is a hurdle for another day. For now I want it to remind them of choice, that they are more than wizards say they are. Even their refusal to accept my badges counts as a victory against institutionalized subservience. I intend to keep on winning, and with many small victories I'll start a change for the better. I dare anyone to look down on me for it!

I know what and more importantly who I am. It is simply unrealistic to believe I can single-handedly shatter this ceiling of magical glass, but I, Hermione Jean Granger, will put a crack in it if it's the last thing I do!

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to hear some opinions, comments, and even critiques. I notice fics tend to avoid this subject a lot or just throw in a pureblood commenting on how very muggle racism is, so it inspired me to write something that draws some pretty direct parallels. 
> 
> [PS: Feel free to tell me you hate my work, but I really hope no one questions me on why I made Hermione POC. (I didn't flat out write it, but yeah I think I made it pretty clear). If writers can make Harry and Draco non-canonically gay for each other, then I don't see why I can't make our golden girl half-black.]


End file.
